Erin, Eric, Evan, Emma, Eckl, and Esme
by Kaye Phantus
Summary: Post Fang. The flock encounters some new bird kids.
1. Incoming

**There you are. Individ chappys. This one is short, but I felt like the break had to be here. Read, Enjoy, and REVIEW!**

"Um, Max?" Nudge said, looking out the window in alarm, "We have a situation."

"Like what?" I asked, jumping out of 'wallowing in self-pity' mode and into 'which one do I hit first?' mode.

"Three flying this way; two big, one small; bird wings, but not likely all birds."

"Attacking?"

"Not right now."

I stood up. "Gather the flock. Time to find out if the newcomers are allies or punching bags."


	2. New Kids

Dylan was the first to see the approachers' faces, thanks to his ability.

"There's five of them, all bird kids. Two of them are carrying two others, one apiece, and the littler one is holding what looks like a cat. Three are boys, two girls."

"Carrying?" I asked. "I thought you said they were all bird kids."

Dylan squinted. "They're unconscious. One boy and one girl, they're alike enough to be siblings, close enough in age to be twins."

"ETA?" Iggy asked.

"Not long." Gazzy replied. "Are you sure Angel will be okay, Max?" he looked over at his gagged and bound little sister.

"Do you trust her? She's gotten better, mind you, but I don't want a repeat of last time"

_Come on, Max._ Angel's voice said in my head. _I'll be good._

_Not on your life._ I thought in her direction.

"Incoming."

The new bird kids land on the deck next to the flock.

"We won't hurt you." the older boy said. He had shaggy, chocolate brown hair; glasses; and wings the color of his hair with a maroon sheen.

"In fact, we need your help." The girl had wavy blonde hair, and white wings with silvery streaks and tan dots. "The twins had another psychic attack, but all it normally does is give them a headache. This time, they passed out, and nothing we can do will get them to wake back up."

"Psychic attack?" I asked.

"That's their special thing," the boy said. "By the way, I'm Evan, and the twins are Eric and Erin." The twins had reddish-blonde hair.

"My name is Emma," the girl said. "This little guy is Eckl (like Dr. Jekyll), and our cat is Esme." She patted the shoulder of the younger boy. He had sandy, tan hair; glasses; and grayish-blue wings with darker blue veins. The cat, Esme, was a gray tabby with a blue collar.

Esme meowed, and Eckl tapped Emma on the shoulder and made a set of hand movements.

"Oh. Eckl wants to know if he can put Esme down. She wants to stretch her legs after the flight."

"As long as she doesn't fall. Come in, all of you, you guys must be exhausted." Dylan said, grabbed Angel, and opened the door.

After everyone was inside, and Eric and Erin were propped up on the couch, Iggy disappeared in to the kitchen, only for amazing smells to waft out minutes later.

"So, what do you guys like to eat? These audio cookbooks have everything and anything."

Emma cringed. "Isn't he blind?"

"Doesn't stop him from being the best cook out of all of us." Gazzy said. And he's right. Iggy makes a mean lasagna.

"Japanese hibachi?" Evan asked. "Fried rice, teriyaki chicken, the works? Some vegetarian for Eckl?"

"Coming right up."

Soon after, the twins' noses started twitching. They simultaneously bolt upright with a start.

"Where are we?" they say at the same time.

"Ah, there you two are. You passed out after your latest attack and we had to bring you here, to Max and her flock. We're safe, it's alright." Emma said.

They sighed. "Safe enough to take a short stretch before we eat?" Eric said.

"Because whatever that is, it smells really good." Erin finished.

"Thank you!" Iggy called from the kitchen.

"Sure." Nudge said. "This place is great for flying. I'll show you around," she looked at me, "right, Max?"

"Fine, fine," I said.

"And, um, I don't want to be rude, but why is she tied up? And trying to get me to untie her with her thoughts?" Emma said after Nudge and the twins had left.

I had forgotten about Angel. "Dylan, could you untie Angel? I think she'll be okay."

Dylan did, and Angel stood up and rubbed her wrists.

"She has a leadership complex." Dylan explained.

"It's complicated." I said.

Eckl opened his bag and pulled out a bag of cat food and a bowl. He shook the bag and meowed. And I mean _meowed, _it sounded exactly like a cat. Esme trotted over and waited as Eckl poured her food into the bowl.

"How did he do that?" I asked.

"That's what Eckl does," Evan responded, "He talks to animals. Any animal. He talks to Esme all the time. But he can't speak English or any other human language, so he either writes or uses his version of sign language. He understands English, he just can't speak it."

"And like we said before, the twins are psychic. Telepathic and telekinetic. They see things from time to time too, and that's what we call a psychic attack."

"What do you two do?" Gazzy asked. "Is it something cool, like shooting laser beams out of your eyes, or walking through walls?"

"Actually," Evan said, "Emma and I don't know what our special is. We know that none of us are related but the twins, but that doesn't help much."

I knew the feeling. It had taken forever for my hyper-speed special to surface.

"It's okay. It was awhile before I found out what mine was. How old are you five?"

"Eckl's around eleven or twelve, and the rest of us are about fourteen- or fifteen-ish."

"Does Esme do anything?"

"We don't think so. She hasn't done anything yet, and Eckl has asked her a couple times, but she doesn't know either. We don't even know what her recombinant DNA is."

Iggy walked out of the kitchen and dusted his hands on his apron. "It's ready. Call Nudge, will you Angel?"

Evan and Emma stood up. "The twins are a bit show-offy, but it is cool to watch them." Emma said. "Come see."

I stood up and walked to the deck, followed by Gazzy, Iggy, and Dylan.

What caught my attention first was the color of Eric and Erin's wings.

"We think they got DNA from a tropical bird." Evan said.

Their wings were like fire, and with the sun glinting off of them, I almost believed they were. They were every color from red to yellow and every shade of orange in-between. There was a metallic quality to them that made them shine in the sun. A more intense version of their hair color.

Their flying was pretty good too. I knew I wouldn't have to go through the same routine with them that I went through with Dylan. Heck, they could teach me a thing or two.

"Time to eat, guys!" I heard Nudge call from above.

They were on the deck in a heartbeat.

"Had fun, you two?" Evan asked the twins.

"Can't talk. Need food that makes good smell." Eric said, and raced into the kitchen.

"Thanks... Nudge, right? It was nice of you to show us around." Erin carefully folded her wings in.

"You're welcome."


	3. Initiation

After everybody had eaten their fill (and the new bird kids had complimented Iggy on his cooking, Eckl via using his finger to trace a checkmark on Iggy's arm), I herded everyone into the living room and sat on the couch, across from Evan, Emma, and the twins on the other one. Dylan was on my left, Nudge on my right, and Angel on her right. Eckl was in-between Gazzy and Iggy on the third couch with Esme in his lap. I was surprised at how fast he had befriended those two. Even now he was writing in a notebook for Gazzy and moving his finger around on Iggy's arm and hand.

"Okay," I said, "question time. We ask you a question, you answer it truthfully, then you ask us a question, and we'll answer truthfully. I'll go first. What lab are you all from?"

"What was it again? The acronym was BIRDS, but what did it stand for..." Erin snapped her fingers as she tried to remember.

"The Blackstone Institute of Recombinant DNA Specimenology." Eric supplied.

"Yes! That's it."

"She's not known for her memory." Emma said.

"Our turn." Evan said. "We were going to ask you before, but now seems as good a time as any."

He took a deep breath.

"We wanted to know if we could join you guys, become part of your flock. We've needed a place to 'roost' so to speak ever since we left the Institute."

"Wait, wait, wait, you left? You didn't escape?" I was confused.

"And does that count as your next question?" Eric asked.

Twerps. "Yes, fine."

"No, we didn't escape. They actually treated us pretty decent there, but after the call went out to exterminate any and all recombinants, the scientists wouldn't kill us. So they changed all the computer files to terminated, closed the lab, and let us go. But now, we can't go back to the Institute or get access to the stuff they did for us. We're on our own."

I thought it over for a moment. "Flock, huddle."

"I like the twins." Nudge whispered. "They seem nice, and they showed me how to do some tricks."

"Eckl is pretty cool, too." Gazzy said. "He's been teaching me sign language."

"He's taught me some sign language too, just the Helen Keller kind. Yes, no, Iggy, Eckl, hello, Gazzy, Esme, cat..." Iggy rattled off all the signs Eckl had taught him.

"Evan and Emma look okay to me." Dylan said.

"I read their minds, they're alright." Angel reassured. "Evan and Emma are good; the twins' minds are confusing, but they're okay; from Eckl, I caught a little English and a snatch or two of fish out of all the animal sounds in his head, but what I understood was good."

"All in favor of initiating the new flock members, say 'Aye'."

Six 'Ayes'. It was unanimous.

"Well guys," I said, turning around to face the five new bird kids, "we voted, and since it was 6-0, you are now..."

I held up three fingers, then two, then one.

"officially"

"part"

"of"

"the"

"flock."

"Welcome to the nest." Gazzy joked.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. Good grief, was it really that late?

"Okay everybody, it's late and we need to get our newest members to bed. Who wants to share?"

"I call Emma." Nudge said.

"Evan can stay in my room." Dylan said.

"Dibs on Eric." Gazzy said.

"You can come with me, Eckl." Iggy said.

Eckl quickly scribbled something in his notebook and handed it to Gazzy.

"Here's another one, Iggy." Gazzy read aloud. "Thank you."

Eckl curled Iggy's hand into a fist, then unfolded his first and second fingers.

"You're welcome." Iggy replied. I had never seen Iggy smile that big before.

Erin was kind of off by herself, and since no one else had asked, I went up to her.

"It's me or Angel, Erin, and believe me; Angel snores way more than you would think a 7-year-old could."

"I do not!"

The change in Erin's expression was instant. "Thanks Max."


	4. Memories

"Hey."

Erin had snuck up behind me while I was looking at Fang's picture.

"Where is he? I've seen him before, but he's not here now, is he?"

"It's a long story."

"I'll listen."

So I told her everything, beginning to end, even the part about the note Fang had left. When I was finished, we both had tears in our eyes.

"I'm sorry Max. It's hard to lose someone like that. I know. They had a sort of school at the Institute for all of the more human recombinants, and there was a boy in us older kids class that was part lion. His name was Leon, and I thought for sure he was the one. You might think: cat + bird = bad combination, but he was perfect. Sweet, smart, funny, handsome. We had only been going out a week though, when his expiration date showed up."

The dreaded expiration date.

"I cried so bad. Even Eric could feel it. After that, Leon and I spent every minute together that we could. And then, at 11:59 on his expiration date, he just dissolved into a gold mist. I've got pictures of the two of us, you want to see them?"

She dug into her bag and pulled out a photo album with_ Erin and Leon_ embossed on the cover. She flipped it open to the first page and pointed to one of the pictures. In it was her beside a boy that I immediately deduced was Leon. She was right, he was definitely part lion. If the shaggy mane of hair wasn't a giveaway, the tail certainly was.

"This was taken a few days before his date appeared."

She showed me a few more pages of pictures, then there was one blank page, after which the pictured started again, but these were full of forced smiles.

"The blank page is the divider between the happy pictures and the post-date-appearing ones."

There were tons of pictures. The very last one, though, was of Erin and Leon, red-eyed from crying, Erin holding up her watch to the camera. It said 11:58.

"That's the very last picture of him. Seconds before he was gone." She started crying; big, silent tears.

I'm normally not a sentimental person, but Erin was more like me than I had thought. So I did something I rarely did.

I put my wing around her and hugged her.

I barely knew the kid, but she had been through more than anyone I knew. Maybe even me.

"It's okay, Erin. It's okay."


	5. Psychics

I woke up the next morning to find Erin's sleeping bag empty. I went around and checked on everyone else. Angel: snoring. Dylan and Evan: sleeping like logs. Nudge and Emma: out cold under a pile of magazines. Iggy and Eckl: crashed out on the floor in front of Iggy's computer.

But Gazzy's room only had a sleeping Gazzy. Eric was gone too.

I wandered into the kitchen and opened the cabinet. And for some reason, the box of cereal that I had bought last week was in the front. I had picked it out, remembering that Fang liked it, but no one else in the flock did. So after he left, it had gotten pushed to the back in favor of everyone else's cereal. I took it off the shelf. The twins must have liked it too, because nearly the entire box was gone. Mental note: Eric and Erin like Fang's cereal.

After finishing a few bowls of my own cereal, I headed out to look for the twins. Nudge couldn't have showed them the whole canyon system, and getting lost was sometimes dangerous, even for a bird kid.

I found them not too far from the house, by the base of a tall rock pedestal, the ground littered with various sized rocks.

Emma had said that they were psychic, but I hadn't imagined anything like this. They were lifting huge boulders with sheer mind power. Up onto the rock column, slammed into targets drawn on the canyon walls, even tag-teaming a couple of times. And except for the thunk and crash of the rocks, it was silent. They weren't talking.

_Either they're mad at each other,_ I thought, _or they're using telepathy._

Which made sense, I mean, Emma had said they were telepathic as well as telekinetic.

I watched them for awhile longer before swooping in. They were so concentrated on what they were doing that they didn't know I was there until I cleared my throat rather loudly. And I guess that I scared them, because a baseball-sized rock came hurtling at my face, only to stop inches from breaking my nose.

"Sorry Max," Erin apologized, lowering the rock slowly to the ground.

"Didn't know it was you." Eric said.

"It's okay," I assured them, "I woke up and Erin was gone, so I went and checked everyone else and you were gone too."

"We like to get up early and practice." Eric said.

"I guess you saw a lot of it." Erin said.

"Just about five minutes." I replied. "Emma told me you were psychic, but I didn't expect it to this degree."

"Oh, you think this is cool?" Eric grinned.

"Wait until you see us fly and play catch with a ball of water at the same time." Erin said.

"And Max? That question hanging around in the back of your head? Do you want us to answer it?" Eric asked.

"Of course she does, Eric, can you not see that too?"

Huh?

"Oh, now we've confused her. Sorry Max. Mind-reading." Erin explained.

Ah. "Been through that with Angel. But it tickles when she reads your mind, you know she's there. You two, I didn't even realize it."

"Practice." they say together.

"Don't teach her. I like to know when she's picking through my thoughts."

The twins laugh.

"Well, to answer your question about 'how are we identical and fraternal twins at the same time?'," Erin started, "one of the scientists at the Institute answered this for us awhile back. She said that the egg we came from was fertilized by a mutated sperm with two heads, an X and a Y. When the zygote separated like it normally does for identical twins, the sperm separated too, forming us. So we have identical DNA, except for Eric being a boy and me a girl. A one in infinity chance, they said."

"She has selective memory." Eric said, rolling his eyes. "She can remember that, but not the name of the Institute."

Erin raised her hand. "Guilty as charged."

"And as for your other question, we think it's better to show you."

"You better brace yourself, though. What makes us pass out might do worse things to you."

I sat down on the ground. "Ready."

And suddenly, the canyon was gone, replaced by a dense forest. I saw a lion asleep on a rock and a huge black bird perched on a branch above, seeming to keep watch. A pack of wolves was sneaking up on them from behind, but the lead wolf stepped on a branch, making the bird fly up and screech at its companion. The lion woke up instantly and ran in the opposite direction of the wolf pack, the bird flying just above the treetops. The chase continued until the lion reached a dead end at the top of a cliff. The bird screeched something to the lion and dove down below the edge of the cliff. The lion snarled at the wolves a few times, then spun around and jumped over the cliff after the bird.

Then, just as suddenly as it had disappeared, the canyon came back. Eric and Erin were rubbing their temples, and I felt a headache coming on myself.

"You two okay?" I asked as I stood up.

"Fine. We're used to it." they said in unison.

"Think you can fly back?"

They nodded, so I got a good run and took off towards the house with them flying port and starboard flanks.


End file.
